Working

It's the third week of school for 2012. Strangely, I find myself working harder in the last 2 weeks, compared to last year or the previous years. I stayed at school longer than I usually did, trying to finish my work. I brought work home even though I swore I wasn't going to work at home. Lol.

But err, why? I have no idea absolutely. I just have a renewed sense of motivation.

Well, my teaching load got heavier. I have more lessons, about 2 hours more of contact time with the students compared to previous years. It's very burdensome, really. I am only required to teach a minimum of 8 hours a week, given my post. But currently, I have 13 hours of teaching time. That's excluding CCA and meetings and all the other activities in school. All of which I have to take in my stride.

Of all the classes this year that I am teaching, I enjoy my Form 5 class the most. It's not the best class. It's the middle class, the average class. But they are only 26 students in there, and I know from Day 1 that they are interested in me too. I can tell from the amusement on their faces that they like my lessons. For that I'm glad. I am committed to help them score in SPM.

One might argue that teaching English is the same for all forms. If that is the case, how come I'm not as excited when it came to teaching Forms 2 and 6? I guess I feel an affinity with Form 5. I've always liked teaching the Form 5 group. I enjoy the Form 5 every year.

It's just quite unfortunate that I have to do management and administrative work. Management isn't my forte, and till now, I am not very focussed in management areas. Actually, a bulk of my time goes to planning lessons. I love doing that. I love to design lessons and devise worksheets. I love to go into the class and teach. So it is quite sad that I can't concentrate on just that. I need to attend to management issues and a whole lot of donkey issues at school.

That is why it gets stressful. I begin this year with some health issues. I'd seen the doc and she asked if I was stressed back when the problem started at the end of last year. Yeah, it did. I was terribly stressed last October and in November, I started experiencing problems. She did a scan for me and prescribed me medication. I thought I was fine after a dose of drugs. But last night, I found out that I wasn't fine because it recurred.

Sigh.

So, I MUST REMEMBER not to bite off more than I can chew. But then, for how long will my diligent streak sustain? I have to idea. I'll just have to wait and see. ;))